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Babylon’s last alcohol seller arrested

Juan Cole 12/18/2009

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AFP: Babylon's last alcohol seller arrested: family

Paul Wolfowitz said that Iraqi Shiites would be better friends for the US than the Saudis because they are ‘secular,’ and Paul Bremer boasted in his memoir of being viceroy of Iraq that he had kept key ministries out of the hands of the Shiite fundamentalists. The AEI predicted that secular ex-Baathist Ayad Allawi would win the 2005 elections. Then when the Shiite fundamentalists who actually did win the elections put it in the constitution that parliament may pass no law contravening sharia or Islamic canon law, the US Republican Party hailed the constitution as a shining beacon for the rest of the Middle East.

In fact, the Bushies and Neocons did more favors for Muslim fundamentalism in the Middle East than anyone since Ronald Reagan and his cronies helped invent al-Qaeda and the Afghan Mujahidin (like our present life and death enemies the Haqqani network and Gulbadin Hikmatyar’s Hizb-i Islami, which Washington has the nerve to now brand ‘Taliban’— as if the CIA had not given them billions).

So members of religious minorities in Iraq are now being arrested for daring sell a cocktail. I guess it is liberated, all right.

End/ (Not Continued)

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About the Author

Juan Cole is the founder and chief editor of Informed Comment. He is Richard P. Mitchell Professor of History at the University of Michigan He is author of, among many other books, Muhammad: Prophet of Peace amid the Clash of Empires and The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam. Follow him on Twitter at @jricole or the Informed Comment Facebook Page

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Muhammad: Prophet of Peace amid the Clash of Empires



Click here to Buy Muhammad: Prophet of Peace amid the Clash of Empires.

The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam


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